Zoning & Land Use

Chicago offers an early test of land-use reform: if a rule was constraining viable activity, how quickly should behavior change once the restriction is removed?

New apartments are routinely described as luxury. Denver’s numbers test that assumption, and raise the harder question of what new market-rate supply does for rents further down the market.

Transportation money is one of the few levers Washington can pull on local land use. The design problem is calibration: incentives too soft change nothing, too blunt and the politics collapse.

The same zoning or financing reform can produce very different results in Denver, San Diego, and Tucson. What varies is which constraint actually binds in a given market.

Remarks at the Council of State Governments East housing event on the emerging federal housing supply agenda, what is moving in Congress, and why state action remains decisive.

Remarks on why America's housing shortage is a systems problem, how fragmented governance produces underbuilding, and why a modern housing framework is needed to align local action, state capacity, federal investment, and accountability.

I explain why land scarcity now drives housing costs everywhere, and how long-term ground leases on underused public land could unlock hundreds of thousands of homes.

How regulation, delay, and rising development costs turned a housing affordability crisis into a breakdown in the basic ability to build — and where that leaves federal policy.

America's housing shortage is not just about affordability. It is a production failure with consequences for public health, equity, transportation, and economic opportunity.

Semafor examined the growing bipartisan federal agenda around housing supply, including proposals aimed at reducing barriers to development and rewarding local reform.

I examine why local housing reform needs support from state and federal institutions, especially when capacity, incentives, mandates, and political risk shape implementation.

I separate what zoning reform can do from what it cannot, arguing for more housing options without pretending land-use reform solves every constraint.

Why economic development policy is increasingly intertwined with housing — how a nationwide shortage of homes became a drag on jobs, GDP, and regional competitiveness, and the local barriers most responsible for it.

I use accessory dwelling units to show why legalizing housing is only the first step when financing, permitting, construction, and tax barriers remain.

I recount how New Rochelle rezoned its downtown around its train station, and why the Build More Housing Near Transit Act aimed to encourage that approach.

I compare 1930s redlining grades with zoning maps in St. Louis and Portland to show how exclusionary single-family zoning sustains old patterns of segregation.

I connect housing, transportation, land use, and environmental outcomes, asking how where we build homes changes travel, land consumption, and emissions.

Bloomberg CityLab examined the growing effort to make housing affordability and underproduction a national policy issue, including Up for Growth's early work on housing supply.